Monday, November 07, 2011

Some days

Some days, it is about the small victories. Other days, it is about just slogging through. Still others, it is muddling through hoping the apple cart didn't turn over.

I'm not sure that today was exactly any of those days, not entirely. There was a small victory (booking a speaker for the elders I work with). There was some slogging through (hello, school work), and a bit of muddling (isn't that most days?). Oh, and some huge frustration with bureaucracy, not sure what that category would be, but today was that too. Even in all that fog of happy, slog, muddling and frustration there were slivers of joy.

In the upstairs of the cabin there is a huge window over the desk, standard height but about 5 feet wide with a view of trees and not much else, that faces west. There is a bit of what we call "lawn" where I have seen deer and woodchucks grazing and can catch a glimpse of the main house if my eyes veer left a bit but mostly trees with just a bit of sky above. The clocks were set back this weekend and my judgement of time is a bit askew and I can't tell if it's later than I think, or earlier, or darker than it should be. Tonight at a bit past 5pm the sun was setting, lighting up the sky with pinks, bronzes, and casting elegant shadows below. With more of the leaves off than on the trees and the conifers losing needles those pockets of light have shifted to allow more contrast of the almost black of branches which the sky peeks through with it's quickly changing rainbow display. This view from the window never fails to offer me a slice of joy, any time of day, any weather, any season.

The other day my beloved brought me curtains to help curtail the blinding light of the late afternoon, but today while I was at work had artfully tacked it up to allow the view to still be available. Sitting at my desk, working on a reading assignment (Pinderhughes's 2000 article in the Journal of Family Psychology on Discipline, if you must know), after being at my internship (it's going well, thank you for asking), I enjoyed the curtain engineering and the briskly shifting light show that my window offers me daily, if I just pay attention.

Perhaps that's what every day brings, the chance to be mindful, to take in the simple things that we know will lighten our souls, if only we remember to do that small task. There are things each day that if we really see them, breathe them, hear them, we can find the path to a moment of happiness each day. This is not something I do consciously every day, but often. I suspect I do it unconsciously some days as well, how much more joy I could have in my life if I was mindful about it every single day? Can one overdose on joy? I suppose a way to find out is to be more purposeful about a simple thing like the view from my window.